Adrien Chen misses the point:
Don’t pick on 11 year-old girls. Seriously. No matter how dumb they seem—no matter how much they might seem to deserve it—they are, at the end of the day, 11 year-old girls.
They are, that much is true. But what Mr. Chen appears to have forgotten is that 11 year-old girls eventually become 21 year-old women. And if they’re not smacked around when they first start copping an attitude, talking trash to strangers about their superiority, and threatening those who fail to acknowledge it with lethal violence, they are probably going to get more than just their feelings hurt one day.
Boys usually learn not to talk too much trash at a young age because one of their peers will eventually punch them in the mouth. Girls who are permitted to do so never learn to stop, which eventually tends to lead to negative consequences in various forms. In cyberslapping around that ridiculous 11 year-old girl, /b/ was actually providing her and many other young girls with a useful object lesson, namely, DON’T BEHAVE LIKE THAT OR YOU WILL REGRET IT. It is ironic, to be sure, but they were acting as better parents to her than her own idiot pair by teaching her a very important lesson: Discipline yourself or a cruel and uncaring world will discipline you.
Anyhow, the whole episode was well worth it simply for bringing us the epic phrase “Consequences will never be the same!” July has certainly been a most excellent month for linguistic progress.